


Lavender, or: Bahorel Bangs a Barista

by Illyria_Lives



Series: Colors [4]
Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-17
Updated: 2013-06-17
Packaged: 2017-12-15 05:34:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/845896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Illyria_Lives/pseuds/Illyria_Lives
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bahorel really fucking hates bullies.  He hates bullies who bully his friends even more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lavender, or: Bahorel Bangs a Barista

**Author's Note:**

> For Bahorel's ringtone, credit to Cee-Lo, "Fuck You"  
> Lavender takes place before Cyan, Yellow, and Black.

Feuilly sighed as he kicked the door to the apartment shut with one backwards-swinging heel, tossing his key ring into the bowl placed on a table beside the door.  When, after a minute, he didn’t shout at the top of his lungs, “HONEY, I’M HOME!” Bahorel suspiciously poked his head around a corner, eyes narrowed.

“What’s the matter with you?” he asked, not unkindly.

The younger man shrugged, flinging himself onto the couch in a practiced way, tangling his legs up comfortably.

Bahorel hesitated for a moment.  Feuilly was never one to complain, but always quick to jump to cease anything that could be misconstrued as pity—including but not limited to the emotions of empathy, kindness, and friendship.  So he tread his way into the subject carefully, giving an easy shrug and settling himself onto the end of the couch, rudely shoving Feuilly’s legs aside to do so.

“How was work?” Bahorel asked.

Feuilly wouldn’t look at him, eyes on the television as he cycled through the channels.  “Fine.”  He had not used that tone of voice since he had been asked, two years ago, “How did your scholarship go through?”

“’Kay.”  Bahorel let it drop.  For now.

* * *

Bahorel had known plenty of people in high school who got their highs from drugs and blades, hard rock music and raves of wild abandon.  He had a different way to release himself.

Knuckles meeting skin.  Leaving behind a mark.  Muscles stretching in his arm, his bones singing with every hard reply his opponent gave him.  Hit.  Hit.  Teeth, loosened in the mouth, blood, warm on the tongue.  Exquisite.  Bahorel was physicality given human form.  His fingers, joints swollen and coated in a light layer of adhesive from his binding tape, traveled over everything, callouses seeking out answers in things he didn’t understand.  And he would be the first to admit that he didn’t know everything.  But God, _did he want to._   Questions seeped from his fingers and his sideways smile was soaked into his faded rock band shirts and his torn jeans.

And questions begged answers.

* * *

**Bahorel:** somthings up with you and i am not giving up

 **Feuilly:** its 3 in the morning

 **Feuilly:** you are literally separated from me by one wall

 **Feuilly:** when it comes to texting sometimes you’re worse than Courf

 **Bahorel:** you take that back

 **Feuilly:** let me fucking sleep and I just might

 **Bahorel:** point taken honey bear

 **Feuilly:** If I was your honey anything I’d have left you years ago

 **Feuilly:** text me one more motherfucking time and I’m shrinking all your vintage band shirts

* * *

Bahorel knew that Feuilly worked at the school as a janitor every other day, and in the kitchens cleaning dishes the days in between.  He walked home on nights when he worked late, hopping a bus occasionally, but most days when he got off he would find Bahorel listening to music in his truck or catching a nap in the flatbed, ready at a word to snap up and drive his roommate home.

But one day, Bahorel decided he had enough of waiting.

He stood on the sidewalk by the parking lot entrance, able to see the academic buildings on his right, the cafeteria and dorms straight ahead, past the quad, where kiosks of food were set up for the hurrying students without the time to stop into the cafeteria, and on his left, last a grassy stretch striped with walkways and walls, the art buildings and the student apartments.

As Bahorel stood, watching, occasionally pacing, giving a good roguish look from beneath his eyebrows to any passing girls, he saw Feuilly emerge from the cafeteria, distinguishable in his faded overcoat and ratty Dodgers cap.  His hands were shoved into his pockets and he walked as if in a gale, head bent and feet resolute.  Bahorel almost called out, when Feuilly passed by a stand with a coffee machine and several assorted breakfast-based baked goods.  The man who stood at the kiosk wore a green apron and as Feuilly walked by, he lifted his chin and shouted.

“Hey, charity case!  Walk on the other side of the road; you’re scaring off the customers.  Go on, fuck off, back to whatever shelter hopeless wetbacks go to.”

Feuilly ducked his head and walked faster.

“Hey, did you fucking hear me?  I said you’re not wanted here; this is a goddamn university, for serious students going somewhere, not back down into the gutter where your mom spread her legs for a buck.  Come one!”  The barista rummaged around underneath the kiosk and pulled out a wrapped package, which he threw at Feuilly, passing by without sparing a glance.  It missed, bursting open on the ground; a mix of garbage and coffee grounds.  Feuilly didn’t seem to notice.

Bahorel did.

“ _Hey!_ ”  Feuilly’s head snapped up at the sound of Bahorel’s voice, cutting through the calm, late afternoon air.  “ _What the fuck did you just say?!”_   Bahorel shrugged out of his jacket as he approached the kiosk and the unperturbed barista, who watched his approach with a lazy look on his face.

“ _I asked you a question, motherfucker. What the fuck did you just say?!”_

“Bahorel, stop, its okay--!”

Bahorel didn’t hear him or feel how his arm was tugged, attempting to stop him.  But he would not be stopped.  He was Bahorel, three time gold glove winner, physicality given form, a powerhouse connected to two hands and a mind that saw only red when his friends were in danger—

The barista drew back his arm.

Bahorel was on the ground.

* * *

“That was the least fun I have ever had hurting someone,” Bahorel told Feuilly, who was helping to hold an ice pack to one side of Bahorel’s face.

“Hate to break it to you, but you didn’t really hurt him.”  Feuilly was furious, Bahorel could tell, but he decided that that mattered less than the black eye he was now sporting, and the serious road rash up and down his bare arms.  His jacket, God bless it, had been left behind in Feuilly’s hectic quest to get Bahorel as far away from the deadly barista as possible.

Feuilly wouldn’t look Bahorel in the eye.  “You’re a fucking idiot.”

“I know.”  His everything was throbbing.

“He beat you up for four goddamn minutes and you didn’t even land a punch.”

“I know.”  Was that blood up his nose?  Or was his nose up his nose?  Frankly it was hard to tell with the amount of swelling going on.

“I have half a mind to call fucking Javert on this.”

“But you won’t.”  Bahorel’s voice was lightly amused, God damn him.  He barely registered that Feuilly slapped at his shoulder.

“But I _can’t_ because if you get in one more fight you get kicked out.”

“Ehh, details.”

“ _I will fucking kill you, Bahorel._ ”

“I’m sorry, okay?  I know you hate to have your battles fought for you, but I couldn’t control myself.  Guy’s worse than a douche.  Worse than a dick.  He’s a dickouche.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“Yeah,” Bahorel sighed in agreement.  “How long has that whole mess been going on?”

Feuilly wouldn’t look at him for a different reason.  “A month,” he muttered.

Bahorel let out a long exhalation.  “And you didn’t tell—“

“I didn’t tell because my best friend is an idiot who thinks with his fists and even then gets his ass kicked.”

“We’re still talking about me, right?”

“I am not intoxicated enough for this.”  Feuilly stood up and walked into the kitchen, where the clinking of glass could be heard.

“That makes two of us!” Bahorel called out, trying to drop a hint, but Feuilly returned with only one beer in his hand.

“What are you going to do, Bahorel?” Feuilly sighed.  “That… _dickouche_ has it out for you now, too.  And he won’t just be yelling obscenities at you, either, now that he knows you like to fight.”

“I am going… to go to bed.”  Bahorel winced as he pushed himself to his feet and slumped off to his room.

“And then what are you going to do?!” Feuilly called after him.

Bahorel’s beaten and still slightly bloody face peeked around the doorway to his room.  “I’m gonna make him fucking _cry_.”

* * *

A week later, Feuilly had stopped walking through the quad on his way out of work, and hadn’t come into contact with the barista.  However, Bahorel continued to arrive home with bruises, contusions, and on one memorable occasion, a missing tooth.

“It’s a half-molar; no one will even notice it’s gone.”

“ _There is no such thing as a half-molar you lying piece of shit.”_

Bahorel skipped the meeting that week, and expected Feuilly, in his common closed way, to keep it to himself.  But, he was disappointed, as Feuilly personally extended an invitation to the Amis to come to their apartment after the meeting, stomping in on Bahorel napping, stretched out on the couch, an ice pack covering his strained wrist.

The Amis stopped in the doorway, unsure of how to continue.

Courfeyrac held up a hand for silence and then crept over to the couch.  He bent over the back, his upper half hidden from view momentarily.  Then he snapped back with a huge smile on his face as Bahorel shouted “I SWEAR TO FUCKING GOD COURF I WILL KILL YOU.”

“I’m pretty sure that God is celibate, but okay.”

Bahorel glared over the back of the couch at that comment, pulling himself up roughly and languidly until he was sitting on the back, arms outstretched.  “Okay, let it go,” he said, “last chance to take in the show.  Laugh it up, boys.”

“What happened?” Enjolras asked, eyeing the bruises and abrasions covering Bahorel’s face and arms.  The stiff way he handled himself hinted at more purple marks hidden beneath his shirt.

“I got in a fight.”

“Obviously,” Combeferre noted dryly.

“Several fights,” Feuilly muttered under his breath.

Bahorel pointed at him.  “Was this your plan, to shame me into stopping my righteous crusade against evil?”

“Not drunk enough,” Grantaire and Feuilly said at the same time, walking together into the kitchen.

Combeferre, meanwhile, was studying Bahorel as he slumped back over onto the couch, making an audible gasping noise as he hit the cushions.  While Bahorel liked to test things, know things (like how it was possible for a barista to keep beating him), Combeferre liked finding reasons.  He liked understanding, not only knowing.

“What’s going on?” he asked, in a tone Bahorel and the rest of the Amis knew too well.  His ‘on the hunt’ voice that normally proceeded intense interrogations on why exactly you were unable to attend one of his hellish study sessions the night before.

“I am getting back into the boxing scene.  Unfortunately there is an up and rising dickouche that for some unfathomable reason keeps beating me.  He is also a jerk to everyone and I want to pull him down a peg by beating him.”

“Which hasn’t happened yet!” Feuilly added from the kitchen.  Bahorel flipped the bird in the general direction of his voice.

“But I’m going to beat him.  I’ve beaten everyone else I’ve ever gone against, and I’m going to beat him.  For the good of the world!”

Feuilly’s groan of disgust was perfectly audible throughout the apartment.

“What the ever-loving _fuck_ is a ‘dickouche’?” Grantaire demanded.

* * *

Two weeks.

Bahorel would wait behind corners to “engage the enemy” and then would be found several minutes later slinking away with the marks of a fist on his jaw and his shoulders.  Often his arms were riddled with scrapes and road rash from hitting the asphalt, his jeans newly torn.  Once he was missing an entire section of hair near his temple.

“Piece of shit fights dirty,” he said to Feuilly as an explanation.

“Stop trying to beat him Bahorel, you’re going to get hurt.”

“Too late for that.”  There was blood on his teeth as he smiled.

* * *

Three weeks.

Jehan found Bahorel collapsed on a grassy area outside the arts buildings, his face buried in the fresh greenness, hands tightened.  The pressure had built to a raging force that finally began to feel the acute pain that came with each defeat.  It wasn’t about Feuilly anymore. It was about Bahorel getting a weight of failure off of his back.

As Jehan approached his friend curiously, he picked up on the growling sounds that Bahorel was making into the dirt.

“You really should stop being such a dork,” Jehan noted.  Bahorel blearily opened one eye to look at the short poet standing over him, but only made it as far as his footwear.

“You’re wearing yellow rain boots.”

“I’m wearing yellow rain boots,” Jehan agreed, sounding far too pleased with himself.

Bahorel closed his eyes and counted down from ten, but only made it to seven before bursting out, “ _This is too fucking ridiculous._ ”

“I’ve worn these boots before; don’t be such a baby about it.”

“I’m not just talking about your goddamn goulashes.  I’m talking about the goddamn barista and goddamn Feuilly and goddamn _heart palpitations_ that I am getting from this whole goddamn experience… and I’ve never seen you wear those before, don’t fucking lie to me.”

“So maybe I haven’t worn them before,” Jehan allowed.  “Still a bit worried about why you’re lying around moaning.”

Bahorel clenched his fists and rolled over, allowing Jehan a good look at his half-healed lavender brushing of bruises.  “ _I have found the source of pure evil in the world_ ,” he said passionately.

Jehan blinked.  “So are we still talking about my boots or…?”

“ _Barista!”_ Bahorel shook one fist at the sky.

After another single long-lasting blink Jehan settled down on the grass beside him, sitting cross-legged.  “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No I don’t want to fucking talk about it,” Bahorel said, before continuing to do just that.

Jehan nodded and made agreeing noises at the proper times as Bahorel glossed over the hell that his life had spiraled into over the past few weeks, and was so engrossed in his story of dickery and abuse that he missed how Jehan’s eyes began to sparkle, twinkle, and do normally nonthreatening things that were in fact very dangerous indeed.

* * *

“Bahorel’s in love!” Jehan announced.

“Is that a pig?” Grantaire craned his neck to peer up at the sky through the window in the small conference room where the Amis, save Feuilly and the man in question, were seated.  The school had the Amis registered as an official campus club, and so they didn’t have to pay the normal fees on the conference rooms at the back of the library, where they chose to meet once a week to plan out charity funds, protests, and any other stepping stones to world peace that Enjolras could think up. 

Combeferre shot Grantaire a look and Bossuet elbowed him sharply.  “What?”

The light in Jehan’s eyes was glittering at a dangerous level as he looked at the resident cynic.  “All that sneaking around he does?  Those bruises?”

“Are you suggesting… Bahorel is into…?” Grantaire took a stabling swig from a flask he pulled from his shoulder bag.

Jehan shrugged.  “I’m not sure; whatever he’s into, he’s into, I guess.  But if I caught the story right, he still hasn’t really had a good emotional contact with this barista yet—“

“Barista?” Combeferre asked quietly of himself.  Bahorel’s fights had been kept on the down low since that night at Feuilly’s apartment, but the title registered something overheard in Combeferre’s brain.

“—and so I’m going to write him a poem that he can give to his _amour_.  Written word is so much easier than spoken, no?  It’ll be great… but I’m gonna have to skip today’s meeting.”

“Sure thing,” Enjolras released him easily with a wave of his hand.

“Are you sure that this is a good idea?” Combeferre asked loudly as Jehan was bouncing out.

His smile, shot over his shoulder, was absolutely terrifying.

* * *

For the entirety of the “Barista Incident,” it had been Bahorel finding the barista around his kiosk, on his way to his car, etcetera, until two days after his encounter with Jehan and his fucking yellow rain boots.

Then, the barista found him, walking to his car after math class.

Blood, spit, and dirt pooled on the edge of Bahorel’s mouth as he hit the ground, mingling on his tongue, which instinctively probed the new cut on his lip.

“Well,” he laughed into the dust of the alleyway, “that was a bit more direct than usual.”

“I just wanted to make it clear that I despise everything about you.  Especially your faggot friends.”  A piece of paper hit the ground near Bahorel’s face, but he didn’t take in what was written on it as the barista drove the tip of his shoe into his abdomen several times, driving out his breath and making bile rise in his throat, mingling with the taste of blood and debris.  A weak cry leaked out between clenched teeth and his face was wet with something other than blood.  Shuddering, Bahorel waited for several minutes before finding the ability to struggle into a sitting position, back braced against a wall.  This was getting a bit out of hand.  Now it wasn’t a fight, it was a massacre.

Bahorel scooped up the crumpled paper and read the few lines printed there.  Blood flooded his vision as well as his face, and his stomach churned threateningly beneath a new collection of bruises.

Oh God.  Oh God.

_Your touch bruises my skin, and your words shake my bones,_

_Hold me close in an embrace of chains and whips,_

_But be kind…_

Jehan.  _Jehan._

* * *

Jehan stopped in his tracks, hands still tangled in the strawberry hair draped over one shoulder, halfway braided.  “What’s going on?” he asked.  The group was amassed not in their normal library conference room, but outside the library itself.

Enjolras, at the head of the group of gathered Amis, gave a glare set to bring down the sky while Combeferre massaged a headache, Joly looked at him in thinly veiled sympathy and Bossuet idly played a game on his phone.  Feuilly and Bahorel were in the distance; approaching at as fast a pace as a freshly bruised Bahorel could stumble.  Courfeyrac shoved his way to the front of the pack.

“The bear has invaded,” he proclaimed, and aimed a finger at Jehan’s chest.  “All because of your smutty poem.”  In the distance, Javert turned around, a glint in his eye at Courf’s well-known nickname for him.

“Speaking of smutty poems,” Bahorel said once he was close, pulling at the front of Jehan’s lacy shirt with his fists.  A vein popped out in his neck.  “You need to keep your tiny little nose out of my business.”  The tips of Jehan’s yellow rain boots scraped the floor.

“ _What what what!”_ Jehan scrambled for purchase on Bahorel’s forearms, pressing down on a large purple bruise.  Bahorel dropped the flowery bundle back onto his feet.

“We’re banned from meeting on campus because we have a registered member who has been accused of sexual harassment.  So thanks.  Thanks for that.”  Enjolras shifted his backpack higher on one shoulder and brushed past Jehan on his way out.  His voice was cold and hardened, and Jehan visibly paled at it.  The group disbanded one by one, headed off in different directions.

Combeferre aimed a look at Bahorel on his way past.  “Don’t think I’m not close to figuring your problem out,” he hissed.

Bahorel gave a weak smile, his split lip twisting horrendously.  “I promise,” he gushed, and Combeferre rolled eyes hidden behind thick glasses.

Jehan, meanwhile, was looking not unlike a kicked puppy.  “Bahorel… I’m sorry.  I didn’t—“

“You know?  Stop.  Just stop.  This is getting too much.”  One hand, knuckles cracked and scabbed, rubbed against a lump on his head.  He winced.  “This is like… it’s growing beyond me.”

Feuilly looked at him with a mix of pride and shame, laying his hand on Bahorel’s shoulder.

“Like a mold?” Jehan offered, and then shrugged helplessly.  “You’d think that a guy as poisonous as you say would have infected his own food by now.”

Bahorel grunted a vague response and headed back to his car.  He needed a drink.  Feuilly watched his back as he left and then sighed off to work, thinking that this might be the end of Bahorel’s confrontational streak.

He was wrong.

* * *

Bahorel had never been big on drinking, not excessively.  A good binge helped him let off steam every once and awhile, usually when he was on parole or a watch list and couldn’t get his fists dirty on another man’s face.  This was one of those times.

Stumbling out of the bar and into the crisp air, Bahorel spread his arms out over his head, feeling the pain lance down through his muscles from a litany of large bruises and abrasions.  He began to walk past the edge of campus, to where he had left his car parked.  He felt, for the first time in three weeks, like he could actually handle the barista.  Actually—

Bahorel hit the ground.  A discarded glass bottle shattered under one of his arms, digging deep into his right forearm.  Pressure, and his skin gave way.  Warm spread sickeningly fast over his hands, braced beneath him as he tried to stand.  A shoe drove into his abdomen, and all breath was gone.  And then a hand was on his shoulder, wrenching him into a sitting position, braced against a wall of one of the college’s outbuildings.  Stars danced down from the sky into Bahorel’s vision, blurring it.  His head was smashed back into the wall and for the first time since he was eight and fell from his bike, he let out a cry of pain, thick with tears.

His arm was clutched to his chest, warmth spreading through his sleeve and over his shirt, sticky red heat that smelled like iron.  Fingers threaded into Bahorel’s short hair, tugging and ripping his head back, baring his neck and jaw to the figure standing over him.  The barista’s face was cold, without emotion.  “I almost enjoy how easy you are to fuck up,” he said, and drew back a fist.  Bahorel’s head swam, and his arm was throbbing like hell, blood seeping everywhere.  He couldn’t open his right eye, and the right side of his face burned.

Bahorel closed his eyes as if the skin of his eyelids could protect him from the blow about to shatter his nose and or jaw.  There was a pause as the barista drew back his arm an extra inch, eyes looking for the perfect place to land the end-all blow.

Glass shattered; droplets of something wet covered Bahorel’s face, and he opened his eyes.  The hand holding onto his bloodstained shirt loosened and the barista was looking at something behind him.  Bahorel, confused behind happiness or relief, looked over his shoulder.

Grantaire stood swaying slightly at the edge of the nearest building, eyes wild and one arm still half raised from when he had thrown his beer bottle at the barista, missing by barely an inch.  The bottle had shattered against the wall behind them.

“Well?” Grantaire demanded, voice surprisingly clear and steady, “either punch the poor bastard or fuck off!”

The barista didn’t seem to like the odds being fair and pushed Bahorel down before beating a hasty retreat.  Bahorel dragged himself up and stumbled over to where Grantaire stood, still swaying, face a bit paler than before.

“Thanks, R,” Bahorel said, “I owe you one.”

“I’m gonna puke,” Grantaire replied, and then did just that, getting some on Bahorel’s shoes.  “Sorry.”

“No, no man, it’s cool.  Let’s get home.”

Grantaire looked like he was about to nod but just emptied the rest of his stomach instead, trying to aim away from his bloodstained friend’s extremities.  Bahorel took that as his agreement, drawing one of Grantaire’s arms over his shoulders and getting him bundled into his truck, taking a swift look at the cut on his arm.  More of a gash, really, it could use a second opinion.

Bahorel hit his signals and began to make his way, snaking to Joly and Bossuet’s apartment.  At a particularly long red light, Grantaire tossed his cookies once more, mostly bile, and as he was hacking the taste out of his mouth, he paused long enough to glance over his shoulder at Bahorel.

“You’ve been getting your ass handed to you.  By a barista.”

“Shut up,” Bahorel said, although his voice was tired and soft.

Grantaire laughed quietly, the wind from the open window lifting his tangled hair from his forehead.

“We’re fucked, man,” he said as the light changed, and Bahorel tightened his grip on the wheel.  Other than that, he had no response. 

* * *

Joly, for his credit, did not cuss them out for showing up on his doorstep at midnight, covered in blood, debris, and alcoholic vomit.

Musichetta, his girlfriend, however, did.  For five whole minutes the fiery lady let it loose on them, revealing hidden pockets of language that neither of them knew she possessed.  Then Bossuet ushered her out for a midnight movie, something she could never say no to, and left them to their work.

Bahorel’s arm was stitched up with Joly tutting to himself in the background, face paling at the amount of blood that was landing on his kitchen table, which Grantaire suspected he would rather throw out than try to disinfect.

“How do you guys keep ending up in these situations?” he demanded as he washed his gloved hands in the sink and Bahorel gently gripped his right fist to test the stitches in his forearm.

“In my defense I have never been beat up by a barista,” Grantaire called out from the bathroom, where he was bent over the toilet bowl in anticipation.

Joly stopped in his tracks and Bahorel sighed heavily.  The truth comes from the mouths of drunks.  Or something like that.

“You’ve been picking fights with that psycho barista who has a stand in the quad?” he asked, eyes bugging out more than usual. 

“You know him?” Bahorel asked.  “Wow, I am spinning a bit.  Should I lie down?”

“Yeah, yeah, sure, whatever.  That barista is the bane of everyone’s existence.  He picks on the weak and throws trash, but he never gets caught doing it.  He’s insane, almost threatened to lock me in the trunk of my car, once.”

“The bastard,” Grantaire added from the bathroom.

“Dickouche.”  Bahorel was staring at Joly’s kitchen ceiling.

“What even…?  But, more importantly, he’s unclean.”  Joly began to pack his medical supplies.

“Now, Jollly, let’s keep it civil.  No need to insult the man’s religion.”  There was the sound of Grantaire coughing into the toilet.

“I’m talking about his food.  Guy’s disgusting, and still no one does anything.  I would call the health inspector on him, but he’d probably find some way out of it.  I bet he even has mold growing on there, somewhere… yeah, I’d bet my left foot everything on that stand is rotten.”  Not much of a bet, considering that Joly thought that there was some form of hazardous mold on everything underneath the sun, and a few things yet to be discovered by man.

Bahorel sat up.  “Say that again.”

“…I’d bet my left foot that everything on that stand is rotten?” Joly tried.

“I said something about his religion.”  Grantaire entered the kitchen with a damp washcloth slung around his neck, and his hair damp from the tap.

_“You’d think that a guy as poisonous as you say would have infected his own food by now.”_

Bahorel’s smile was full of blood and joy.  “Joly, welcome to Operation: Fuck Starbucks.  I need you to get your hands on something for me.”

Joly’s eyes were even buggier now, but Grantaire had a dangerous smile on his face.  “Sounds like fun,” he said, and gave an almost experimental crack of his knuckles.

“First we need to make a call.”

“To who?”

“To the health department, of course.  We need to report a dickouche selling tainted food.”

* * *

“What have you got for me, Doc?” Bahorel asked Joly when they met by the barista’s kiosk midnight the next night.  Grantaire stood idly by, on lookout but in reality he just watched the drama unfold.

Joly pulled out a petri dish from his backpack.  “This fungus is known to breed easily in disposable food left open to the elements, and is a proof of poor food management.  Finding this anywhere on his kiosk will automatically get his license to sell food revoked indefinitely.  Which means that he will be banned from school property as well, since he threatened the students and faculty by selling food he knew was tainted.”

“Perfect,” Bahorel gushed, and then bowed with a sweep of his arm.  “After you, Doc.”

Joly could barely suppress his pleased smile as he thought of finally being able to walk through the quad without being verbally abused.  He approached the stand with the fungi in his hand.

Grantaire stuck his thumbs into his pockets and began to whistle the James Bond theme.  Bahorel smacked his arm.  “Stop that.”

“Shaken, not stirred,” he retorted.

“Both of you shush.  I want to get this finished before I catch my death from cold,” Joly was kneeling by the closed kiosk, prying open the flaps, before he paused in confusion.

“It’s like, sixty five degrees,” Bahorel noted.  No response.  “Joly?”

“This isn’t right,” Joly muttered under his breath.  “This should all be kept refrigerated, covered from the air…” he continued to poke around in the booth, showing that the muffins and cakes were still on their display shelves.  “And what’s this…?” he scraped at a grayish green substance and then looked at his finger.  “GAH!” he slammed back onto the ground, scrambling away on all fours.  “AH!” he rubbed his finger furiously on his jacket sleeve and on the ground.

Bahorel shushed him furiously.  “Dude, shut _up_ , he goes to…”

“ _Hey!”_

“…night school.”

“Run?” Grantaire asked.

“Run and hide.”  Bahorel tugged the freaking Joly to his feet and lead the sprint away from the shadowed figure approaching, at too fast a pace.  Grantaire skidded to a halt and tugged Bahorel after him, towards a low brick wall that edged a walkway out of the quad.  He slid over it, jeans tearing on the bricks, Joly and Bahorel tumbling after him into the shadows.  They all held their breaths, Joly holding, vice-like, onto Grantaire’s arm, as he spread his arms out to their full length, holding Joly and Bahorel pinned back against the wall.

The sound of the approaching barista softened and slowed.  The night was taut with pressure and silence.

And then:

“FUCK YOooU!”

The three all froze at the familiar lyrics blasting from Bahorel’s pocket.

“ _Shitshitshitshit—_ “Bahorel fumbled for his phone, the text alert tone blaring once again as Courfeyrac texted him three times in quick succession.

 **Courf:** hey b i kno its l8 but i need sum peanut butter

 **Courf:** no questions

 **Courf:** im just let myself into ur apartment w/ my spare key

There was the sound of the barista turning quickly on his heel, shoes clicking against the cement as he sprinted forward towards their hiding place.

“SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT!” Bahorel launched himself forward, Grantaire and Joly following along behind, fear clouding their breaths and jackets flapping and snapping behind them.  They ran until the barista fell away in the distance, but they did not stop until they were at Enjolras and Combeferre’s apartment, panting in the hallway outside their door, hands on their knees.  Joly was sitting on the ground, head tilted back as he took in great gasping breaths.

“I am going to kill Courf,” Bahorel swore.  “Honestly, this time.  I’ve got connections.  I could get my hands on an unregistered gun, easy.”

“I’ll help you hide the body,” Grantaire replied smoothly.

After a moment of chest-heaving and gasping silence, Joly spoke up.  “I could probably set up the anatomy class to buy his corpse.”

Bahorel nodded, a smile tugging at one side of his mouth.  “And then we’ll use the money to get smashed.”

Grantaire frowned at his feet.  “Actually, we’ll probably end up using that money to pay the fine for calling in a false report.”

That sobered up any potential smiles that Joly and Bahorel could have had.

“I’m still going to get drunk,” Bahorel said as he quietly used his spare key on Combeferre and Enjolras’s door.  “God help me, I don’t want to remember any of this for as long as I live.”

* * *

“There is a God, and he is generous.”

“Good morning to you too, Dr. Joliarde, but I’m not a theology major.”  Bahorel groaned as he sat up in bed.  They had hidden out at Enjolras and Combeferre’s apartment for an hour before going their separate ways.  By the time Bahorel had gotten home it was four in the morning.  He glanced over his bedside clock and groaned louder, more keening, as he saw that he had been asleep for only three hours.

“You need to get to campus right now, Bahorel.”

“Ehh…”

“ _You have got to see this._ I’m calling Grantaire—“ Joly hung up his phone and Bahorel slumped his way through half of his morning routine before hopping in his truck and heading to the campus.  As he walked towards the quad, he spotted Grantaire, looking as well-rested as he felt, and Joly, looking far too pleased with himself.

“What…” Bahorel stopped himself, eyes locked on the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. 

Javert, the old FBI agent turned campus security, was standing by the barista, who was getting interviewed by two men in suits.  One of them carried a clipboard; the other was elbow deep in a briefcase that was open on the counter of the coffee stand.  As the three watched, the man pulled out one arm and squinted at a vial of colored liquid.  The man’s face paled considerably and he stowed the vial away before approaching the barista and talking to him in an angry tone.

And then, glory of glories, the man turned the barista around and handcuffed him.

 _Handcuffed him_.

“I thought that you didn’t have time to plant the fungus?” Bahorel demanded happily of Joly.  He was half laughing in joy and relief.

Joly’s wide smile cracked a bit.  “I didn’t.”

A moment of silence as they all took this new turn in stride.

“What?” Grantaire asked.

“I didn’t have time to plant the fungus.”

“Then you mean…” in horror, they all looked at the coffee stand that they and their friends had snacked from for a greater part of the year.  Now, the agents were undoing a long piece of yellow plastic and securing it over the stand, their faces and hands covered protectively.

“I’m gonna fucking puke,” Grantaire said in a quiet, horrified voice.

“Why?”  All three spun around to see Enjolras approaching them.  Combeferre was coming from another direction, strides purposeful.

“Uh…” Bahorel looked from one to another.

“That barista’s stand is _crawling_ with infectious germs and viruses, and a strain of fungus that when ingested causes the lining of the stomach to—“Grantaire clapped one hand over Joly’s mouth.  Enjolras was pale, Combeferre even more so, moving his tongue around in his mouth and remembering his weekly habit of buying a muffin.

“No more,” Combeferre said sharply, pointing at Bahorel.

“No more what?”

“ _I don’t know.  No more._ ”

“Right, gotcha.”

Enjolras sighed and moved one hand through his blond hair.  “Well I’m happy that this is over.  But we still don’t have a place to meet every week.”

“Yeah.”  Bahorel scuffed one shoe ruefully, and then thought of something suddenly.

* * *

**Bahorel:** you owe me fuckin big time courf

 **Courf:** im at ur mercy

 **Bahorel:** find me a place on campus but not on campus big enough for us to meet every week

 **Courf:** thats just vague enough to work

 

* * *

“Are you sure this is going to work?” Jehan asked in a whisper, as if he could be heard all the way across campus at Javert’s offices from the inner room of the Musain Café, a rundown little hole in the wall joint that had a perfectly large drink menu and a selection of separate meeting rooms apart from the main eating area.

“According to current land specs, this is a part of campus, and therefore cannot refuse a school club meeting space,” Bahorel recited the email that Courf had sent him earlier that week, “but according to the tax payments for the past decade it is outside of the school’s campus.”

Jehan nodded, still a bit unsure, and ducked into his drink.  “I really am sorry,” he said.

“And I really cannot hold it against you because you inspired the plan that actually saved me and Feuilly from daily asskickings.  One condition, though.”

“What?”

“No more yellow rain boots.”

Jehan looked like he wanted to disagree, face twisted up, but then sighed and clinked glasses with Bahorel.  “Deal.”

“So, this is it?” Enjolras looked around the motley room, with mismatching chairs and tables, and a large antique map of France tacked to one wall.

“Don’t be too quick to judge,” Bahorel said, leaning back in his chair in a way that was almost familiar.  “It’s better than nothing.”

Enjolras took another look around, watching over his shoulder as Grantaire and Bossuet entered, talking animatedly about something.  Bossuet tripped on an uneven floor tile, and Grantaire stopped his fall with one hand, signaling the bartender for a drink with the other.  The dark haired man tilted his head back and laughed.  Through the wide glass window, Combeferre was seen walking down the street, nose stuck in a book.  He took several steps past the door before he realized what it was, and he straightened imperiously before entering.

“It’s good,” he decided, sliding into a seat at the head of the table.  A waitress caught his eye and he mouthed _water_ at her.  Blushing and flouncing, she had it at his hands in record time.

Grantaire swung himself into the seat beside him, a bottle of beer already half empty in his hands.  “Well, _that_ was an experience, I tell you.  One I never hope to go through as long as I breathe.”

“Praise God in heaven above, may Jehan never try to right a flirtatious sonnet ever again,” Bahorel raised his glass high.

“I’ll drink to that.”  Enjolras lifted his sensible nonalcoholic drink beside Grantaire.

As they all took stabling drinks, the door to the café opened wide, and the hero of the night walked in, followed by a nervous looking young man their age with thick black hair and a frankly aristocratic nose.

“Hey guys, this is Marius Pontmercy, in my government class!”

Bahorel nodded amicably to the young man, set down his drink, and then threw himself at Courf.

“Nice to meet you,” Enjolras shook Marius’s hand while Courf yelled and Bahorel threw punches, flying across the floor.

“Nice to meet you too.  What…?”

“Don’t ask… ever.”

Enjolras completely expected Marius to beat a hasty retreat, but instead, almost against his own instincts, he took a seat.

As Bahorel pinned Courf to the ground and drew back a hand for a controlled fake punch to the nose, stopping inches from the member.  He enjoyed how Courf flinched and sweated, and the sight of tendons flexing beneath his skin.

The bruises were fading to an almost peaceful shade of lavender.

**Author's Note:**

> Next time: Red, or: Now You See Me


End file.
